Gamebook store

Friday, 8 June 2012

After all the recent posts about the writing of my interactive Frankenstein book app, you may like to try it out. And now you don't even need an iPad or iPhone, as development wizards Inkle have put a Frankenstein web demo up on their site. Pop over and have a conversation with Victor about what he's got in that tank - just click where you see the words "Give it a try."

This demo is the sort of thing that publishers ought to be putting up on their websites too, incidentally, not just leaving to developers. But we're only in 2012. Softly, softly.

Wednesday, 6 June 2012

Reality is breaking apart. Fracture lines exist in the
fabric of reality and are spreading. People can be sucked out of the universe.
Their lives are just erased as if they had never existed. From the darkness
beyond the fault lines, other things from a time that never happened are
waiting to break through into our world.

The players are cabals of wizards who operate secretly in
the modern, urban environment. They alone can maintain and repair the cracks in
reality. However, the various cabals are at loggerheads because the cabal that
mends the final fracture will remake the world on their terms.

Any use of everyday magic widens the cracks, making damage
to the local environment and the incursion of nightmare creatures more likely.
Some districts of the city appear whole and normal. Other neighborhoods, where
the cabals are weak, are magical Chernobyls where no one can walk in safety.
Hence cabals have to organize and self-police to limit such damage. They also
have to band together to compete with other cabals on a citywide scale.

* * *

Every so often you come up with a piece of an idea. You wait
around for something else to join it to, and if you’re lucky that grows into a
novel or a game design. Other times, those fragments just sit around as
orphans.

Fractures is one of those.

Jamie and I would love to work it up into something. It’s
got a modern Lovecraftian urban thing going on, and as a big fan of B.P.R.D. I
find that has a strong appeal. Not that it’d look anything like B.P.R.D. when
it grew up. I think of it as more Tarot teams up with Doc Strange to
investigate The Killing.

We even tinkered with a script, whether for a game cutscene
or a comic book we couldn’t say. But still the concept stubbornly refused to
come out of its chrysalis. And there it remains, perhaps forever – or,
alternatively, sudden inspiration next week might kindle a spark of existence
for it. These things are rarely in the authors’ hands.

INT. HYLEM BUILDING –
DAY

The doors open and Grace gets out. She’s in a long anonymous
hall which, in contrast to the lower floors, is still decorated in a sober
‘forties style.

She makes her way along the hall. The doors are dark wood
with heavy round handles and frosted glass panels. Set under the glass pane on
each door is a copper nameplate. They’re all blank.

Grace looks back along the hall. The elevator doors close.

She tries one of the doors. It swings open.

INT. OFFICE IN HYLEM
BUILDING – DAY (CONTINUOUS)

Grace steps into the office. It’s uncarpeted and bare except
for a single desk with an old-style dial telephone.

The telephone is off the cradle. It’s emitting soft buzzing
sounds that seem like speech, but distorted so as to be sibilant and hard to
make out.

She approaches the phone and picks it up. For just an
instant that we catch a voice talking quietly, half hidden by the heavy clunk
as she picks the receiver off the desk.

Grace listens to silence on the other end of the line,
punctuated by just a few random clicks.

GRACE

Hello?

She jabs at the cradle contacts.

GRACE

Who’s there? Hello. Hello.

Suddenly she hears a soft exhalation of breath on the other
end of the line. Grace stiffens.

Sunday, 3 June 2012

If you want to write your own digital gamebooks, there are a couple of authoring tools for that purpose. Varytale has a selection of interactive stories online already, and you can publish your own or submit through them. However, when it comes to the reader experience I prefer the way that Inklewriter subliminally guides the eye so that you don't keep having to reorient yourself within the text. They are both worth trying out, though, and no doubt we'll be seeing more tools like this in future.

I'm interested in the way that interactive literature (a subset of interactive fiction, which I use to mean any story that is interactive whether text-based or not) works differently on screen than on the printed page. In traditional print gamebooks, you are turning pages to read just as you would in a regular book, so there is no special compulsion to rush to the next choice - that choice is just an instruction which page to turn to next. On screen, however, there is the powerful allure of the button. There, when the choices are just between two courses of action, I find myself skimming the text in my rush to make the next choice.

What's the solution? Well, you could make the choices more interesting. Rather than read a half-page of text followed by "Do you parry or dodge?" I'd prefer several pages of text and then be faced with a choice I have to consider very carefully. Or you could embrace the speedier read, as Jamie and I did in the Fabled Lands books, in which case your book starts to look more like an old-time text adventure: "You are in the rolling hills north of Metriciens. Go north, west, east or south."

Or you could eschew plot-based decisions in favour of the kind of character-driven interactivity I used in Frankenstein. Ask a friend if they want tea or coffee and it's a snap decision, so who cares how you phrase it? But ask them about a moral choice or what they thought of a movie and you've got a discussion going.

What's interesting about ebooks generally is that they are not just books on screen, in the same way that movies aren't plays and television drama isn't cinema. A subtle difference in the reading experience can have a profound effect on the content. It remains to be seen how this will affect the interactive literature of the future.

Search This Blog

This month's pageviews

Featured post

I intended to put this up to commemorate the start of the Interregnum (and also the anniversary of the Beatles’ last public performance , o...

Followers

Dragon Warriors

New revised & expanded edition of the classic British RPG. Available in hardcover, paperback and as a free PDF version.

The Empire of the Petal Throne

Tekumel is a world in the distant future, isolated from the rest of the galaxy by a spacetime catastrophe. Civilizations have risen and fallen over the millennia. Ancient technology is regarded as magic. Engineered species and automata are seen as demons.

You have come upon the fabled lands

Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson have created an exotic gaming world with hundreds of quests, locations and choices. This is your gateway to the Fabled Lands.

As well as our classic gamebooks and role-playing games such as Dragon Warriors, we talk about our current projects: the epic fantasy comic book Mirabilis, the Roald Dahl Prize winning Dark Lord: The Early Years, an interactive literary take on Frankenstein, and new novels, apps and games that you'll hear about here first.

Follow us on Twitter

HEART OF ICE

Are you ruthless enough to seize the ultimate power? The classic SF adventure of greed, alliance and betrayal in a new revised edition. Just click on the picture.

The Frankenstein Wars

What does war become, when death is not the end?

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

A prophecy of your own death at the hands of a pirate as black-hearted as the devil himself. A crew of bloodthirsty dogs who would cut your throat for a doubloon. And high seas adventure with magic, mystery and the undead. NOW AN INKLE APP!

The Keep of the Lich Lord

A classic Fighting Fantasy Gamebook now fully rebooted as an adventure in the Fabled Lands

The Serpent King's Domain

Demo by Paul Gresty of the long-awaited Fabled Lands book 7

BLOOD SWORD IS BACK!

The True Magi are planning to return from exile among the stars to enslave mankind. It's a time in need of heroes. The gamebook saga for solo or multiplay, back in a brand-new large format edition.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ARABIA

Enter a magical world of lost palaces, uncharted islands and haunted deserts. Do battle with bandits, fire wizards, ghouls and djinn. For this is the land of the Thousand and One Nights, where even a beggar might rise to save a kingdom.

Fabled Lands Publishing UK

Our UK bookstore. Click/tap on the masthead banner if you're looking for US links.

FRANKENSTEIN

A new kind of interactive novel. Be the voice of Victor's conscience - or goad him to ever greater heights of hubris. Available in the App Store now.

Sparta Sourcebook

A guide to Sparta in the year 485 BC, as the threat of attack by the Persian Empire grows daily. Includes city map with key features.

Enter the Mayan underworld!

Mayan myth comes to life in interactive revenge saga. App by Cubus Games for iOS and Android.

Critical IF Gamebooks

Classic interactive stories in a new collectible edition. Click on the picture for more info.

Peter Andrew Jones Art Studio

Books, cards, calendars and posters by the legendary fantasy artist.

80 Days

Multi-episode open-world next-gen gamebook from the creator of Samsara and the coders of Frankenstein.

Avenger returns!

The classic '80s gamebook series in a brand-new revised paperback edition.

NECKLACE OF SKULLS

Through trackless forest thick as night, across burning plains, even into the depths of the underworld, your quest for vengeance takes you to the gates of death in a mythic struggle against the demon who slew your twin.

JAMIETHOMSON.COM

The horror... The horror...

Starship Captain

The hilarious new sci-fi series by the author of the Dirk Lloyd books. Now on sale.

Fabled Lands Book 5 now on Amazon

Assassination, adventure and intrigue in the Court of Hidden Faces - on sale now!

Fabled Lands Book 6 now on Amazon

Tension between Sovereign and Shogun threatens Akatsurai with civil war

Roald Dahl Prize 2012

The lord of all evil is trapped on Earth in the body of a 13-year-old kid. Brilliant comedy adventure by Jamie Thomson.